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I Was a Teenage Multi-Tasker

Why is it critical the we examine the psychological and social impact of our increasingly connected lifestyles? Well, one good reason is because the eyes of our kids are almost always glued to a screen of one type or another (usually several at the same time).

The average young American now spends practically every waking minute — except for the time in school — using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device, according to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation…

And because so many of them are multitasking — say, surfing the Internet while listening to music — they pack on average nearly 11 hours of media content into that seven and a half hours.

It seems clear that, for many parents, this screen time is an acceptable (and maybe even positive) trend. Cell phone ownership among kids is going through the roof. Owning a cell phone used to primarily mean that a kid could be in contact with a parent in case of emergency, etc. Now, owning a cell phone means web access, videos, games, texting, social networking, and more. And the numbers associated with these trends are increasing so rapidly, we’ll have little chance to consider their long term impact before nearly complete saturation is reached.

This post originally appeared in Tweetage Wasteland which has been merged with NextDraft.

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